The Stages of Attachment:
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| Fog - Getting to Know You. In the first days, weeks and months of life, the newborn and the new parents are in a fog. The infant's fog is adjusting to the out of the womb world. The parent's fog is learning to read and interpret the infant's signals, meet the infant's needs and adjust to this new responsibility. |
| Symbiosis - Falling in Love! Aah, that first smile. What a feeling! Infants in symbiosis experience themselves as one with the primary caregiver, mother and/or father. Positive interactions are experienced by the infant as interactions of the barely discernible self with the world, with life. |
| Differentiation - Turning Outward. During the fog stage, infants are cradles in the parent's arms at breat height or cuddled into the parents' shouldr, the infants face is usually turned towards the source of nourishment, the bust. In symbiosis a new dynamic is evident in the holding posture. Parents and infants are frequently looking at, gazing at each other. Around the beginning of the fifth month of life the infact parent posture adds yet another new dimension: the baby begings to sit on the parent's lap or straddles the parent's hip. The baby is beginning to explore the other than parent world. |
| Practicing - Practicing Being Different. The practicing stage consists of repetitive experiences of practicing at being different from, away from, and safely connected to the parent. As the baby begins to differentiate between the mother and/or father and strangers (around 8-9 months) she is also spending more of her awake and alert time ont he lap looking out, or on the floor beginning to creep. |
| Rapprochement - Uh Oh, We Really Are Two Separate People. The same child who joyfully darted off, exhibiting delight in leaving the parent, becomes very focused on the parent, on the parent's whereabouts. Earlier, the toddler was playing at being separate, now the toddler is often subconsciously and sometime consciously aware the she is separate. |
| Consolidation - Two Whole People Joined by Trust, Positive Interactions and Belonging. The last stage of attachment formation is really the beginning of the child's individuality As rapprochement resolves the child learns that she is truly not one with the parent: she experiences herself as separate from and safely attached to the parent. |
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Crucial Building Blocks of Self
According to object relations theory, the core structures of self are object/self permanence and object/self constancy. Both of these crucial ego structures form from multiple repetitions of interations with caregivers in the attachment process. These interactions between parent and infant/child are essentially sensory experiences.
The infant experiences itself in the world through its senses. The infant develops perceptions of safety, comfort, warmth, value and joy through sensory interactions with the carefivers. The building blocks of self, object/self permanence and object/self constancy, are primarily sensory experiences of self in the world, not cognitive. The child or adult experiences itself as stable, safe, secure and whole in various situations when the building blocks of self are strong and stable: the child or adult expereiences him/herself as unsafe, insecure, weak and vulnerable when the building blokcs of self are weak or missing
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